Hey guys, I was tasked with designing some large posters for use in lightbox stands. They are 2 metres x 1.5 metres.
I need some guidance on how to prepare these for print. It’s all vector at the moment. Any help would be very much appreciated.
Get the dimensions of the lightbox stands including the border that may cover important things.
Then design around the obstacles that are out of your control.
Vector is fine. So whatever you need to do to make it work.
There’s no secrets to it.
Thanks Smurf2.
I have done what you said. The Design is finished and ready to go. I just want to make sure I prepare the files properly for print so the quality is not lost when scaled up.
Or should I just send the printer the InDesign files?
Bottom line
Ask them what they prefer, InDesign files or the PDF.
PDF is usually preferred
Ask them for a joboptions files - this will be a file you can use to load in InDeisgn - File>Adobe PDF Presets - and load the file there.
When you go to make the PDF use the settings from there.
Ensure you have bleed on your document - it might not be needed but better to have it.
If they don’t have a .joboptions file ask them what they prefer as a PDF.
You could choose PDFX4a as your output if they don’t know - but they should.
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OK great. Thank you very much!
These things are 2mx1.5 METERS
They may not want a PDF.
Best to ask.
Are all critical colors called out as Pantone coated?
You have no raster imagery at all in there that would cause you to worry about resolution? That would include drop shadows and glows. Illustrator has a Raster Effects setting that controls those. It should be set at at least 100-150 at final size for something that size if you have placed vector art. InDesign will output whatever you tell the PDF to be so be careful.